Pre-Alpha – The Gibbening

Pre-Alpha has been gibben!

Well folks, as of early this week, we have officially transitioned into Pre-Alpha! This is a huge milestone for us and it’s the first time we’ve had people using GameGlass other than the team since we announced it. We will now celebrate with an obligatory gif.

So how’s it going?

So far, so good! The feedback has been amazing so far, and GameGlass has performed better than expected on a wide array of devices. It has been tested on large tablets and small tablets, wide tablets and skinny tablets, and the only real issue we are having right now that’s serious is with older versions of iOS (9.5 and below I believe). This issue has been passed on to our lovely front-end team and they know how to squash the bug, so its just a matter of time!

There is also a bunch of features we have decided to move from pre-alpha to alpha so we can get it in your hands quicker.

Here is some feedback we have got so far:

“Ok… I just tried it for a couple of hours and so far it works very well, no lag at all, very fast response to commands and very easy to use interface. I have had some issues, but most probably from switching from basic to advanced keyboard controls… I have to fix them from my side. Performance has been excellent so far.”

– Sepe

“All functions available to us in current revision – just tested on Samsung 7” tablet. WORKING PERFECTLY!!!! Yes even tested it with Dragonfly – Cyclon RN – Hoplite and Arrow.

Buttons are not too small but this size display would be the smallest I would use – then just hit mobile screens instead. I plan on 2 x 7″ in Portrait mode Mobile screens next to main tablet in landscape mode with regular screen.”

– Chilly

It works beautifully, actually. The 7″ tablet is almost the perfect size for an MFD. My only criticism really is that the three horizontal box buttons leaves a lot of empty/wasted real estate and you could probably make them a little bit thicker or better separated without affecting the design aesthetics negatively. But that’s mostly my problem for using small tablets, I think.

– KhyberPass

Usually I would pick and choose which components to turn off. That means going to Inner thought, hitting menu, scrolling sometimes to choose the right one, clicking the items tab, and then selectively turn off components that are not needed. That works well when you have plenty of time to plan your ingress during an attack.

But once you are in ingress, what is much more effective is to go from near Zero Heat/EM/IR to pop up just what you need. In this case, weapons power, single tap on the GameGlass. Just that by itself isn’t always enough for the local targets to notice me. but it’s super quick to do so with gameglass so I’m already locking on by the time they do notice. Torpedo is away and by the time they are done doing any kind of evasive, to more taps to turn off weapons and/or turn on shields and make my escape. Basically, I can act like a submarine, only exposing myself during torp firing. Then I “sink back down” to near Zero on my Egress from the area.

Doing this with Inner Thought would be very taxing, and it would take me away from my spatial awareness and take a lot of time flipping switches in the MFD further exposing me during my egress escape. It’s entirely more practical with GameGlass and makes it, as I mentioned, more effective and keeps me aware and focused on what I should be. i.e. spatial awareness.

– TheHuntress

GameGlass in real life!

Most of you have seen what GameGlass looks like through screenshots and optimal display sizes, so I wanted to post a few images of what GameGlass looks like when it’s actually running for our pre-alpha users.

It’s not all rainbows and butterflies.

Yes, feedback has been VERY positive, which is great! Maybe people are being too modest, maybe not. Either way, we are really happy with the feedback we are getting so far. There are some issues though.

Refactoring the responsive design

We have decided that instead of using breakpoints we are going to refactor some code to be based on VH (viewport height) and VW (viewport width) that scales dynamically based on screen size. With breakpoints, we are just creating extra work for us for every shard, and redundantly coding the same things over and over. Time for a change!

Looking into some client changes

There has been two issues with the client so far.

Some users with multiple network adapters are having issues because GG is trying to connect with the wrong IP address. We plan on fixing this in Alpha by allowing the user to select which IP they want to use if they have more than one.If you don’t load GG with administrator privileges you aren’t able to execute commands in game. We are looking for a way to fix this.

iOS issues

On older versions of iOS (I believe it’s 9.5 and below) we are having issues rendering GameGlass. This will be fixed in a patch during the pre-alpha phase.

Sound glitches

The sounds play correctly 95% of the time, but there is some specific use cases that add some unnecessary delay. These will be fixed ASAP.

Still lots to do…

There are a great deal of changes we are making for our Alpha release, mostly these are changes you won’t be seeing. Right now, for users to connect to pre-alpha, there is a long string of text they have to type into the URL bar to connect. Not ideal!

For Alpha, we are implementing a massive overhaul to authentication. All you will have to do is download the client on your host PC, and then login to GameGlass on your tablet and you will be connected. Much more efficient. What this also means is you won’t need to re-add GameGlass to your homescreen if you are using it as a web app every time your IP changes, which is a big QOL change.

NOTE: You HAVE to use GameGlass as a web app on iOS in order to have a proper experience. Don’t be scared, this just means you are browsing to the app on Safari, then pressing the button to add GameGlass to your homescreen, and launching it from there. It’s super effective!

On top of all of this, we have to devise a system to allow everyone to redeem their alpha/beta/launch keys from IndieGoGo.

Staying on track

Even with all of these changes we want to make, we still plan on getting Alpha out ASAP. We feel really confident in GameGlass right now, so it’s just a matter of getting all of the backend & client tasks in place, and making sure we have a good strategy of gathering feedback/reporting bugs.

Very exciting!

Hey, what about that sim rig?

If you weren’t aware, we are giving away a MonsterTech Sim Rig! There has been some AMAZING entries so far. This isn’t about who has the most amazing rig though, as long as you enter, you have a chance to win one of the prizes.

There are 7 DAYS LEFT, so make sure you submit an entry, and don’t forget to include a screenshot of GameGlass on your tablet for it to be a valid entry.